Jorge Cham

Early life and education Jorge Cham was born and raised in Panama to parents working in the Panama Canal Zone as engineers for the United States Government. He received his B.S. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1997, and earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. He previously worked at Caltech as an instructor and as a researcher on neural prosthetics. He has now fully devoted to his comic work.

Cartoonist In 2005, Cham became a full time cartoonist and began an invited speaking tour of major universities delivering his talk titled "The Power of Procrastination". In this lecture, Cham talks about his experiences creating the comic strip and examines the sources of grad students' anxieties. He also explores the guilt and the myths associated with procrastination and argues that in many cases it is actually a good thing.

In 2012, Cham wrote and produced The PHD Movie, an independent feature-length film based on his comics. The film featured real researchers and academics and was screened at over 500 universities and research centers worldwide. In 2015, Cham wrote and produced The PHD Movie: Still in Grad School, a sequel to the first film, which also screened worldwide. He also illustrated the book Scientific Paper Writing: A Survival Guide (2015) by Bodil Holst.

Cham has also had six collections of his comics published, with the most recent one — a 20th-anniversary edition — backed by more than $234,000 in pledges on Kickstarter. was a Der Spiegel Best-seller, and was awarded the Wen Jin National Book Award in China.

Cham is also the co-creator of Elinor Wonders Why, a show on PBS Kids that is based on Cham's daughter. The series premiered on September 7, 2020. He is the co-owner of Shoe Ink, which produces the Elinor Wonders Why series and That's So Interesting, a live-action short form series hosted by Cham and featuring 3 characters from Elinor Wonders Why itself being Olive, Ari & Elinor.